“My parents were only children and I grew up with only one grandmother. Now I’ve found new relatives and helped them discover their own Jewish past.”

EDITORS' NOTE - May 2013

We bring you four more inspiring stories by authors whose research and travel connected them to the past and enriched their present. Our authors live in Israel, France, and the United States—with ancestral towns in Romania, Bessarabia, Ukraine and Poland.

Rachel Lev-Leshem, whose mother was a Holocaust survivor, travels to her ancestral town of Érmihályfalva, Romania. A chance meeting at the town’s Synagogue leads to the recovery of the Mezuzah from her great-grandparents’ home.

Marla Raucher Osborn sorts through family stories and vital records to determine if her grandmother’s Bessarabia family surname of Heller had once been Blecher, as rumored. Researching this large family yielded many variations of the surname, leading Marla to caution researchers to have an open mind and experiment liberally with spelling!

Aaron Hurwitz connects with an unknown branch of his Blistein family as a result of his posts on JewishGen’s Family Finder and Family Tree of the Jewish People. Contacted by a member of the Bliss family years after his original postings, they discover the direct link between the Bliss and Blistein families—Uncle Mitch!

Janet Silver Ghent is contacted by a formerly unknown distant cousin as a result of her posting on JewishGen’s Family Finder. Through their collaborative research they find common ancestors in Poland and England, and she learns about relatives who settled in mid-19th-century San Francisco. Janet also finds a relative in Arizona through the timely placement of a classified ad.

We hope these stories inspire you as you engage in your own research. JewishGen provides many resources to assist you in expanding your knowledge and connecting with family. We wish you success and encourage you to send us your stories.